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THE TOP FOUR REASONS WHY

PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE FAILS AND
“WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT”
Published on August 6, 2019

Ricky Smith CMRP, CMRT 143 articles Following

Vice President- World Class Maintenance

Many companies adopt some form of Predictive Maintenance (PdM) technology

as the first step in the path to improved plant reliability. However, the returns
from these initial PdM investments often fail to meet the expectations of
management.

Many of you have seen the ineffective use of predictive maintenance where
failures occur even though you are using some type of PdM monitoring. I lived in
this world as a maintenance supervisor and it frustrated me that I could not
define the use of PdM more effectively.

I wrote this article in order to share my experiences with you based on my

successes and failures. So let’s look at the top four reasons why PdM has failed to
meet management’s expectations as I have seen.

In order to define why Predictive Maintenance fails let’s first understand the
definitions of “Predictive Maintenance” and “Predictive Maintenance
Technologies” or "PdM Technologies".

> Predictive Maintenance is the monitoring of an asset’s health in order to

anticipate the opportunities to proactively perform maintenance to preserve an
asset from failure or to protect it in some way. PdM Technologies are the
instruments or technologies used to collect asset health data.

> The purpose of Predictive Maintenance is to maximize, at optimal cost, the

likelihood that a given asset will deliver the performance necessary to support the
plant’s business goals. By “optimal cost” we imply that if it is feasible, and
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economically sensible to perform a task that detects a failure far enough in
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advance to make intervention practical, then we will have avoided the far greater
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costs of equipment downtime, secondary damage, as human injury, Reactivate
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environmental impact, quality and others.

In order to use PdM technology one must understand how equipment fails.
Through studies we know 20% of failures are time based and 80% of failures are
random in nature and cannot be effectively correlated to time or operating hours.

> PdM provides one of the major tools to predict failure of an asset. PdM use for
random failures must focus on the health of the asset (through monitoring
indicators such as temperature, ultrasonic sound waves, vibration, etc.) in order to
determine where an asset is on the degradation or PF Curve.

Point “P” is the first point at which we can detect degradation. Point “F,” the true
definition of failure, is the point at which the asset fails to perform at the required
functional level. In the past, we defined “ Failure” as the point at which the
equipment broke down. You can see points P and F and the two different
definitions of failure by referring back to Figure 1.3.

The amount of time that elapses between the detection of a potential failure (P)
and its deterioration to functional failure (F) is known as the PF interval. A
maintenance organization needs to know the PF Curve on critical equipment in
order to maintain reliability at the level required to meet the needs of the plant.
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Without this knowledge how can one truly understand how to manage the Reactivate
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reliability of the asset?

> PdM should be used to define where on the PF interval is the health of the
asset. Define the point of failure in the PF interval far enough in advance that the
asset can have planned and scheduled maintenance performed to restore the
asset. As you can now see, understanding failures is very important to understand
how to use PdM technologies to its full potential.

Let’s now look at the four main reasons that PdM has failed to deliver expected
value.

Reason 1: The Collection of PdM Data Is Not Viewed as Part of the Total
Maintenance Process (Refer Back to Figure 16.9)

Many organizations, at least initially, view PdM as a separate activity from the
core role of the maintenance function, and so it is not covered in the maintenance
process. Some organizations start down the PdM path by email or snail-mail the
resulting predictive data to the plant. In other companies, a PdM resource (often
seen as the Reliability Technician) is assigned the predictive role, or a PdM Team is
formed. When these individuals or teams are not seen as an integral part of the
maintenance department, their value is unlikely to be realized. Also, quite often
the predictive data will be supplied to the maintenance organization, but the
technician who collected the data is not consulted on the results, so the potential
for well-informed data-driven decisions is limited.

If PdM is disconnected from the maintenance process, the PdM program will
likely fail because the value cannot be identified.

For example, have you ever seen a case where a maintenance employee becomes
the new PdM technician? He may be the lucky one picked to operate the brand
new $50,000 thermography equipment. In an immature reliability environment,
the new role usually comes with a title that includes the word “Reliability.”

This new Reliability Technician goes out and starts snapping pictures of assets
that show interesting heat profiles (when your only tool is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail). But for most of these assets, a reasonably sound failure analysis,
if performed, would not identify excessive overheating as the best predictor of
failure.
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Or, potentially even worse, after the failure of a particular asset is determined to Reactivate
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be “overheating,” the Reliability Technician is assigned to produce thermographic
profiles of every similar asset in the plant regardless of probability of failure,
frequency of failure, failure consequence, etc. Is it any wonder that production
and maintenance personnel see limited value in the Reliability Technician’s data?

To get the most out of PdM, I recommend that you make it an essential part of
the Work Identification and Work Execution elements in your maintenance
process.

The steps in the Work Identification should clearly identify failure modes, and the
best techniques for predicting those failures.

> PdM tasks are identified as part of a complete asset maintenance program, so
we understand why we are doing the work and we are not doing unnecessary
work.

> Work Execution conducts the work specified in the asset maintenance program
in the most efficient manner possible.

> Tasks should be grouped in routes and handheld devices used where the PdM
technology requires human intervention.

> Involve production, maintenance, and PdM personnel in failure analyses and
the resulting work execution. In this way, we ensure that the prescription for
failure management applies our PdM capabilities where they are most valuable.

"The involvement of production, maintenance and PdM personnel also ensures

that the predictive data will be welcomed and seen"

In this scenario, maintenance and operations management ask … “Why did we not
see this equipment failure coming?” yet the PdM Technician can often point to a
chart or spreadsheet logged days ago and say “I told you so.” Management’s
perception is that the information was received too late.

Yet, in reality, the data was there, but was not visible when it would be most
valuable. Predictive maintenance activities generate massive amounts of data
related to the health of the equipment. To be of real value to maintenance and
operations, the data must be visible to maintenance, effectively analyzed while it’s
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still current, compared against defined “normal” states and the analysis Reactivate
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communicated in a real-time manner.

We know from a reliability standpoint you cannot see or predict all equipment
failures. However, most degradation in equipment performance can be observed
well in advance with the integration of PdM technologies and techniques.

Using handheld data collectors, operators and trades people can record real-time
and time-stamped health indicators and feed that data into a computerized
reliability system. The amount of data collected in any 8-hour shift is likely to be
overwhelming if it was to be managed manually.

And yet with appropriate computerization, the normal and non-normal state
information creates the opportunity to selectively focus on only the handful of
data points that are relevant to each shift—where the asset health degradation is
evident in the data.

This form of data management can lead to the ultimate use of PdM capability,
where management can easily make critical maintenance intervention decisions—
driven by real-time data, before it is too late.

PLCs and DCSs can provide important production data such as pressure, flow, and
temperature that can also be useful for assessing asset health. Most of us think of
PdM in the traditional sense; vibration analysis or oil analysis. Yet the production
data available in most companies is quite extensive.

"We need to selectively tap into this valuable resource"

A cautionary word about production data; like other forms of PdM information,
it’s only valuable if used in the context of a failure analysis. Most thorough failure
analyses will point to production data as appropriate as valuable as it arrives for
understanding indicators of certain failure modes, while the majority of failure
modes will rely on the collection of data through human senses.

So hooking up a data-rich production database to a CMMS/EAM will only result

in increasing the amount of useless data in making the right decision at the right
time and help capture equipment historical data which is typically not accurate in
most plants.
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These more advanced PdM programs recognize where production data can add
value, and they take advantage of the fact that it’s readily accessible electronically
(for production use). Using this data, maintenance can better predict the
degradation of equipment performance to determine the opportune time to
intervene with proactive maintenance activities.

An example I was very familiar with as a maintenance supervisor was we had a

DCS (Distributive Control System) which main function was to monitor the
parameters of our production process and production equipment.

We managed our production process using Statistical Process Control. Our DCS
managed a lot of data and did a great job of it for production. What we missed
was using specific data in this system to help maintenance make asset reliability
decisions.

I will use our rotary press as an example; the rotary press (calendar system)
pressed two 300 CM rolls to form a matted product from woven fibers through
this drum type press at speeds of over 500 meters per minute. The pressure of
this rotary press had to stay constant in order to make the desired product.

A complex hydraulic servo system was used to maintain the pressure required on
this press in order to deliver the product required. Our DCS monitored the
hydraulic servo valve milliamp output as part of their process control measures.
We checked (visual inspection by an electrician) daily the milliamp signals from all
servos. We did not plot the data and relate the date to the PF Curve and thus the
decisions we made on this system were either made too early or most of the time
too late.

> Reliability software now allows for continuous monitoring of the milliamp
signals coming from these servos.

> This data could have been collected real time, plotted and assisted in
determining where on the PF Curve we needed to make a decision to change out
a servo valve (based on the values from one servo valve controller) or the change
out of the hydraulic pump (based on the values from numerous servo valve
controllers) using reliability technology and methodology.

> With this technology available a milliamp signal would be connected from the
DCS to the Reliability Software where a decision can be made based on data with
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servo valve or pump far enough in advance that failures could have been kept at Reactivate
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a minimum.

> This reliability software can be connected directly to the CMMS/EAM so that
planning and scheduling of the work would be seamless and allow accurate
history to be documented on the equipment.

Separate software systems are usually employed to manage the many specialized
sources of PdM data:

> Contractors have their data,

> The PdM team has several separate databases for each PdM technology

> Production PLCs and DCSs also store required data.

> In addition, reliability engineers collect condition and state data from a variety
of sources (typically as a result of a formal work identification process like RCM)
and apply rules and calculations manually (day-after-day).

To act on this disjointed information from a variety of sources, it becomes

impossible to realize significant value. So what should you do about it?

With today’s technologies, all of these data sources can be integrated to enable
timely maintenance decisions. Quite often, the best indicator of health is built
using rules or calculations that combine data from multiple sources.

With a well integrated solution, maintenance can use real-time data to focus on
defining the right proactive work to be performed at the right time. Utilize
systems that sort through normal and non-normal data, and display the results in
ways that are easy to understand, and utilize.

Here is an example of a system that eliminates the sifting through piles of data.
The plant, all of its assets and failure-mode-specific health indicators are
displayed in a Health Indicator Panel, a two-panel screen showing the entire plant
hierarchy and all assets on the left side, and relevant health indicators on the
right side.

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This panel allows you to monitor asset condition and, at a glance, see any
indications of impending failures—before the failures occur. As non-normal
values are recorded, alarms are triggered and displayed, drawing attention to
only the few data points that currently signal the potential for equipment failure.

Flashing alarms are displayed when assets are moving closer to functional failure
and alarm severities are readily understood based on the type of icon displayed
as an EM or CM Work and can be automaticly generated as a Work Order at a
specified Hand Held PDA or Planner's work station.

These flashing alarms are displayed when assets are moving closer to functional
failure and alarm severities are readily understood based on the type of icon
displayed. Here corrective maintenance decisions can be made based on asset
health and risk to the business.

Some Simple Guidelines Will Help to Get You Moving in the Right
Direction

1. Do not stop what you currently are doing in Predictive Maintenance but evolve
your PdM strategy into your maintenance program trading the ad hoc wrong
work at the wrong time to the “right work at the right time.” Do this by aligning
your PdM work with the maintenance process required to keep your equipment
reliable.

2. Identify the most critical assets (those which are at highest risk to your plant)
and focus on putting in place a PdM strategy within the context of a complete
maintenance program for these assets. If you want to make your PdM more
effective, you need to know which assets are more important to monitor. When
you implement this strategy you want “rapid results” which immediately gets
people excited about what you are doing.

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3. Establish performance targets for these highest risk assets (focus7 on just one
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asset at a time) and measure the success of your new strategy. Performance
targets must be in production terms: increased capacity, decreased downtime, etc.
and in maintenance terms such as increased Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF).

4. Work with operators, maintainers, and PdM technicians to assist in identifying

known and likely failure modes on the highest priority assets. Develop a complete
asset maintenance program of which PdM is an integral element.
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5. Implement this new PdM strategy within the context of a complete Reactivate
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maintenance program on one asset at a time and monitor the results. If this
process has been followed properly you should see results in a short period of
time.

An effective PdM program must be integrated into a company’s asset reliability

process so that the right decisions can be made at the right time utilizing
accurate data which is fed into a reliability software which is in turn seamlessly
linked to an effective CMMS/EAM. Being able to make reliability decisions far
enough in advance to plan and schedule maintenance work will drive an
organization from being reactive to proactive quickly thus allowing the company
to meet it’s business goals 100% of the time.

The time has come for change. The best time to begin this new journey is “now.”

Excerps taken from Keith Mobley and my book,

"Rules of Thumb for Maintenance and Reliability Engineers" by

Elsevier Publishing.

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Published by
Ricky Smith CMRP, CMRT 143 articles Following
Vice President- World Class Maintenance
Published • 12h
What the Reasons why PdM Fails to acheive the expectations of Leadership in your Organization? Check out my article
and post your comments or advice to others. #CBM #PdM #CBMConference2019 #RickySmithCMRP

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1 Comment

Add a comment…

Robin Wavite CPAM, CAMA, CMRP, MIEAust • 1st 2h

Superintendent-Reliability Engineering & Condition Monitoring at Ok Tedi Mining Ltd

So true, Ricky Smith. Thanks for the share.

Ricky Smith CMRP, CMRT

Vice President- World Class Maintenance

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